Stephen Hawking and his "no need for God" hypothesis

[Pleroma]

Kant is "ancient wisdom," by your standards?

I didn't said that but its the distinction of the phenomena, the world of appearances and the noumena, the world which exists as it is, is very essential to understand this new emerging paradigm.

Bernard D'Epsagnat and I firmly believe that Esoteric Religions can know the noumenon, the ultimate reality existing independent of the human mind and we are already seeing that it has testable consequences and a new consensus is emerging.

 

[Pleroma]

You say you know how atheists think, because you used to be an atheist. You then go on to demonstrate total ignorance of 'how atheists think.' This is why you now have zero credibility.

After having laid out my arguments one can see where Stephen Hawking stands and where Bernard D'Espagnat stands. I want to be on the side who are Intellectually honest.

As someone said, "Atheistic Scientists are arrogant and ignorant"

 

[Storm]

I didn't said that but its the distinction of the phenomena, the world of appearances and the noumena, the world which exists as it is, is very essential to understand this new emerging paradigm.

Bernard D'Epsagnat and I firmly believe that Esoteric Religions can know the noumenon, the ultimate reality existing independent of the human mind and we are already seeing that it has testable consequences and a new consensus is emerging.

When I asked you to be specific about your "ancient wisdom," you cited an opinion piece whose oldest reference was Kant.

Say it with me: credibility.

 

[Storm]

After having laid out my arguments one can see where Stephen Hawking stands and where Bernard D'Espagnat stands. I want to be on the side who are Intellectually honest.

Then perhaps you should brush up on your definition of "honest," and maybe then get into specific forms of honesty. For now, I'll help you out: Hawking is an intellectually honest atheist. Yes, they exist. It is actually possible to have an unpopular opinion without being a liar.

 

[Pleroma]

But your out-of-context quote just supports the point I have been making. People of religious faith will go to great lengths to rub science's "halo" off on their religious beliefs. Einstein used religious references metaphorically, and he was quite clear about rejection of religion during his life. He publicly debated the first televangelist, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. It didn't matter. Long after his death, people still quote him as if he were a supporter of their religious belief. He should have steered clear of those metaphors.

This is again a serious misunderstanding, I didn't quoted Einstein as a scientist, I quoted him as a philosopher. I don't need any justification from Science nor from scientists, Esotericism as a discipline stands on its own. All along I am arguing that even the assumptions of science and its foundations can be questioned and showing that science is not all there is by applying the top-down approach of the eastern standards and therefore your assumption that I am desperately trying to use scientists to justify my beliefs is blatantly false. I don't need to do that because Esotericism is going to correct the scientific consensus and also put an end to the correct conclusion of the interpretation on quantum physics.

Esotericism is an independent discipline and it is based on a completely different methodology and both religion and science are based on a completely different epistemology and it needs no justification from science. If its anything it is scientists who need to learn from esotericists.

 

[Storm]

This is again a serious misunderstanding, I didn't quoted Einstein as a scientist, I quoted him as a philosopher. I don't need any justification from Science nor from scientists, Esotericism as a discipline stands on its own. All along I am arguing that even the assumptions of science and its foundations can be questioned and showing that science is not all there is by applying the top-down approach of the eastern standards and therefore your assumption that I am desperately trying to use scientists to justify my beliefs is blatantly false. I don't need to do that because Esotericism is going to correct the scientific consensus and also put an end to the correct conclusion of the interpretation on quantum physics.

Esotericism is an independent discipline and it is based on a completely different methodology and both religion and science are based on a completely different epistemology and it needs no justification from science. If its anything it is scientists who need to learn from esotericists.

And YECs, we've heard it before.

 

[Pleroma]

When I asked you to be specific about your "ancient wisdom," you cited an opinion piece whose oldest reference was Kant.

Say it with me: credibility.

That's because you have a personal bias, if I state something from the ancients, you blatantly ignore it as I don't believe it. Saying I am not going to believe in ancient wisdom is like saying I want to wipe out the history and the origin of religions and walk blind-folded.

I am not just coming from one religion, all religions Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Tibetian Vajarism etc are all saying the same thing but many people don't see it because they don't realize the common esoteric essence of all these religions.

 

[Storm]

That's because you have a personal bias, if I state something from the ancients, you blatantly ignore it as I don't believe it. Saying I am not going to believe in ancient wisdom is like saying I want to wipe out the history and the origin of religions and walk blind-folded.

I am not just coming from one religion, all religions Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Tibetian Vajarism etc are all saying the same thing but many people don't see it because they don't realize the common esoteric essence of all these religions.

How would you know? You haven't actually stated anything from them, only invoked their vague presence as if you expected it to make people take what you say at face value.

Somehow, I get the impression you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you haven't coughed up enough money to get the real "wisdom" yet.....

 

[Heathen Hammer]

Nope, what is relevant or what counts is that who has better knowledge in the violation of Bell Inequality by recent experiments and its philosophical and epistemological consequences and who has better knowledge in the deepest truth of Esoteric Religions.

A personal attack is not an argument. Try to make genuine arguments or demonstrate that science can simulate conscious thought if not both Mind and Intellect belongs solely to the realm of theologians and God is very much necessary for a complete model of the cosmos. Esotericism is going to correct both Science as well as orthodox religions and its going to fill gaps in our knowledge.

Wrong.

You want to blow this off because you were caught out.

This is an observation; it feels like an attack because you were a damned liar and were also foolish enough to not be clever enough to cover it convincingly. Your misdirection and sudden demands for other subjects notwithstanding.

My observation was in fact spot-on, since we can also see that you are totally unapologetic for lying. You are now trying to justify it away.

Such a good religious person.

 

[gnomon]

I've always respected Stephen Hawking's intelligence and tenacity in the face of his illness.

Last night I got to see the full episode of the show in which he describes why there is no need for God in the creation of the universe. As I understood his reasoning, before the Big Bang, time did not exist and there was no "before". Therefore there was nothing for God to exist in. However, I see one flaw in his reasoning (how arrogant of me ). He seems to be referring to a pantheistic God, a God who is the universe. He doesn't consider the possibility of a panentheistic and transcendent God. If God is transcendent, which as a panentheistic Hindu I believe, then God exists outside of time. A transcendent God does not need time or anything to exist in, therefore in my reasoning, the universe could very well have been created by God, even though there was "no before" this universe.

What say you?

Than the question remains why does a panentheistic God need to create a universe?

I think Asimov posted a great answer to this in the Last Question. The answer was to exist. However, this still leads to the question of initial existence and the necessity of a universe, specifically with a conscience species, for such an existence merely for existing. Unless one accepts Adams and many others possibilities that existence is merely the recognition of itself through an infinite multiple possibilities.

Which brings us back to the point of ............. boredom?

 

[Pleroma]

How would you know? You haven't actually stated anything from them, only invoked their vague presence as if you expected it to make people take what you say at face value.

Somehow, I get the impression you don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you haven't coughed up enough money to get the real "wisdom" yet.....

There are things which Money can't buy.

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]." Gospel of Thomas.

You cannot buy the Kingdom of God with Money, Can you? No, right.

The whole Gnostic Christianity which is the esoteric Christianity is based on the theology of Pleroma.

"The Gnostic Paul is a book by Elaine Pagels, a scholar of gnosticism and professor of religion at Princeton University. In the work, Pagels considers each of the non-pastoral Pauline Epistles, and questions about their authorship. The core of the book examines how the Pauline epistles were read by 2nd century Valentinian gnostics and demonstrates that Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic.

Her treatment involves reading the Pauline corpus as being dual layered between a Pneumatic, esoteric Christianity and a Psychic, exoteric Christianity."

Pleroma refers to the totality of Divine powers(Aeons), its the place where all the opposites reconcile into one unity.

"The second phowa is known as the phowa of the sambhogakaya. The sambhogakaya phowa involves seeing everything as the mandala of the deities, wrathful and peaceful, as in the zhi-khro practice itself.

ALL PHENOMENA APPEAR AS THE MANDALA OF THE PEACEFUL AND
WRATHFUL DEITIES. THESE DEITIES DISSOLVE AS A RAINBOW IN THE SKY.
RELAX THE MIND IN THE NATURAL STATE WHICH IS THE UNION OF
APPEARANCE AND EMPTINESS, FREE FROM COMPLEXITIES. ALL SOUNDS
ARE THE SPEECH OF THE WRATHFUL AND PEACEFUL DEITIES. THIS
EMPTINESS SOUND DISSOLVES AS THE DRAGON'S VOICE OF THUNDER
DISAPPEARS IN THE SKY

This describes the completion stage practice. Learn to merge your mind with everything in the mandala, just be part of the as-it-is and relax into that nature. This is known as the transference of consciousness through the sambhogakaya."

- A Modern commentary on Karma Lingpa's, ZHI-KHRO, Tibetian Buddhism.

Science cannot get beyond mere appearances of the phenomena as explicitly said by Bernard D'Espagnat because of this very particular reason. We need Religion to have a complete model of the cosmos.

Agnisoma Mandala is the basis of Hinduism.

It is this Agnishoma mandala’s (pleroma of gods) grace and flavour that every living being is kept alive. This is a matter, which can be tested by means of yoga. Agnishoma mandala (pleroma of Gods) is the place of origin or principal place of Purusha (The soul of the Universe, the masculine principle) and Prakrithi (The passive power of creating namely, Nature, the feminine principle).

- Devudu, a Sanskrit Scholar and a ritualist.

This is in so much similarity with the Gnostic view of the world which says that everything comes in dyads i.e. with male and female forms.

"Valentinians believed that God is androgynous and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad. This is related to the notion that God provides the universe with both form and substance. The feminine aspect of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. Silence is God's primordial state of tranquillity and self-awareness She is also the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial. The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First Father. Depth is the profoundly incomprehensible, all-encompassing aspect of the deity. He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form."

-The Gnostic society Library


Its in Judaism as well as in Hellenistic philosophy and Plato explicitly talks about it in his works.

Philo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How many religions do you think I have discussed in this post? There is Bhuddhism, Tibetian Vajraism, Hinduism, Christianity, Hellenic Philosophy, Judaism etc. There is a common esoteric essence hidden in all the major recognized religions of the world. There is no distinction between the east and the west, our roots come from a common single point where all the mutual opposites meet at a single point, the west called this the Pleroma and the east called it the Mandala.

According to the psychologist David Fontana, Mandala's symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises."

I very well know what I am talking of and I know I am on the right track.

 

[Photonic]

There are things which Money can't buy.

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]." Gospel of Thomas.

You cannot buy the Kingdom of God with Money, Can you? No, right.

The whole Gnostic Christianity which is the esoteric Christianity is based on the theology of Pleroma.

"The Gnostic Paul is a book by Elaine Pagels, a scholar of gnosticism and professor of religion at Princeton University. In the work, Pagels considers each of the non-pastoral Pauline Epistles, and questions about their authorship. The core of the book examines how the Pauline epistles were read by 2nd century Valentinian gnostics and demonstrates that Paul could be considered a proto-gnostic as well as a proto-Catholic.

Her treatment involves reading the Pauline corpus as being dual layered between a Pneumatic, esoteric Christianity and a Psychic, exoteric Christianity."

Pleroma refers to the totality of Divine powers(Aeons), its the place where all the opposites reconcile into one unity.

"The second phowa is known as the phowa of the sambhogakaya. The sambhogakaya phowa involves seeing everything as the mandala of the deities, wrathful and peaceful, as in the zhi-khro practice itself.

ALL PHENOMENA APPEAR AS THE MANDALA OF THE PEACEFUL AND
WRATHFUL DEITIES. THESE DEITIES DISSOLVE AS A RAINBOW IN THE SKY.
RELAX THE MIND IN THE NATURAL STATE WHICH IS THE UNION OF
APPEARANCE AND EMPTINESS, FREE FROM COMPLEXITIES. ALL SOUNDS
ARE THE SPEECH OF THE WRATHFUL AND PEACEFUL DEITIES. THIS
EMPTINESS SOUND DISSOLVES AS THE DRAGON'S VOICE OF THUNDER
DISAPPEARS IN THE SKY

This describes the completion stage practice. Learn to merge your mind with everything in the mandala, just be part of the as-it-is and relax into that nature. This is known as the transference of consciousness through the sambhogakaya."

- A Modern commentary on Karma Lingpa's, ZHI-KHRO, Tibetian Buddhism.

Science cannot get beyond mere appearances of the phenomena as explicitly said by Bernard D'Espagnat because of this very particular reason. We need Religion to have a complete model of the cosmos.

Agnisoma Mandala is the basis of Hinduism.

It is this Agnishoma mandala’s (pleroma of gods) grace and flavour that every living being is kept alive. This is a matter, which can be tested by means of yoga. Agnishoma mandala (pleroma of Gods) is the place of origin or principal place of Purusha (The soul of the Universe, the masculine principle) and Prakrithi (The passive power of creating namely, Nature, the feminine principle).

- Devudu, a Sanskrit Scholar and a ritualist.

This is in so much similarity with the Gnostic view of the world which says that everything comes in dyads i.e. with male and female forms.

"Valentinians believed that God is androgynous and frequently depicted him as a male-female dyad. This is related to the notion that God provides the universe with both form and substance. The feminine aspect of the deity is called Silence, Grace and Thought. Silence is God's primordial state of tranquillity and self-awareness She is also the active creative Thought that makes all subsequent states of being (or "Aeons") substantial. The masculine aspect of God is Depth, also called Ineffable and First Father. Depth is the profoundly incomprehensible, all-encompassing aspect of the deity. He is essentially passive, yet when moved to action by his feminine Thought, he gives the universe form."

-The Gnostic society Library


Its in Judaism as well as in Hellenistic philosophy and Plato explicitly talks about it in his works.

Philo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How many religions do you think I have discussed in this post? There is Bhuddhism, Tibetian Vajraism, Hinduism, Christianity, Hellenic Philosophy, Judaism etc. There is a common esoteric essence hidden in all the major recognized religions of the world. There is no distinction between the east and the west, our roots come from a common single point where all the mutual opposites meet at a single point, the west called this the Pleroma and the east called it the Mandala.

According to the psychologist David Fontana, Mandala's symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises."

I very well know what I am talking of and I know I am on the right track.

All you've shown is there is a correlation in how humans come up with religion, and that it can be traced back to certain ideas. That isn't grounds for your wildly disproportionate assumptions.

 

[otokage007]

Thanks for the explanation about your beliefs, it was interesting but quite off topic if I may. I still haven't seen a plausible argument of "the no need for God" hypothesis being wrong or "dishonest" as u have said.

 

[Pleroma]

Thanks for the explanation about your beliefs, it was interesting but quite off topic if I may. I still haven't seen a plausible argument of "the no need for God" hypothesis being wrong or "dishonest" as u have said.

That's why I was a bit hesitant to quote statements from ancient wisdom in this thread, its off topic.

ScienceDirect.com - New Scientist - Reality check

Read the above article.


"To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we're looking at it" says Michael Brooks.

"Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality".

- Vladko Vedral

"The researchers take this to mean we have to abandon the idea of an objective reality. “Maybe Bohr and Heisenberg were right after all,” Aspelmeyer says."

“Physics doesn’t tell us how nature is, it only tells us what we can say about nature.”

"The Moon doesn't exist when no body looks at it"

- David Mermin.

"What we call reality is only a state of mind"

- Bernard D'Espagnat.

Concept of 'hypercosmic God' wins Templeton Prize - opinion - 16 March 2009 - New Scientist

Once you accept that mind is something different and separate from the brain then what is behind the Mind is the Intellect and what is behind the Intellect is the very Pleroma of God, the Mystical Body of Christ in which all the totality of divine powers reside in him. Therefore one is not far away from theism.

Colossians 2:9 In Christ dwells all the fullness (pleroma) of deity in bodily form

Pleroma means the totality of divine powers. J.B. Lightfoot has an excellent commentary on the Meaning of Pleroma, pg 257-273.

St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians & to Philemon: A Revised Text with ...

Thank you!

 

[idav]

"To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we're looking at it" says Michael Brooks.


"Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality".

- Vladko Vedral

That is not at all what quantum observation tells us. Do you really think people have the ability to literally observe the path of a photon?

 

[Pleroma]

That is not at all what quantum observation tells us. Do you really think people have the ability to literally observe the path of a photon?

The argument is from recent Bell Experiments, its about counterfactual definiteness and locality.

"Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs."

Simon Groblacher,1, 2 Tomasz Paterek,3, 4 Rainer Kaltenbaek,1 Caslav Brukner,1, 2 Marek Z_ ukowski,1, 3 Markus Aspelmeyer,1, 2,  and Anton Zeilinger1,

1Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
2Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI),
Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, A-1090 Vienna, Austria
3Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Gdansk, ul. Wita Stwosza 57, PL-08-952 Gdansk, Poland
4The Erwin Schrodinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics (ESI), Boltzmanngasse 9, A-1090 Vienna, Austria

This lecture by David Mermin sums it up quite nicely.

[youtube]ta09WXiUqcQ[/youtube]
Spooky Actions At A Distance?: Oppenheimer Lecture - YouTube

Now you replace those Red and Blue color properties with the property of an object called the spin, say spin up and spin down and those A, B and C with the X, Y, Z spin components of an object then as Mermin shows these properties cannot exist in prior to the measurements and the observed correlations are infact instantaneous. Its not that one physicist was right or the other one was wrong but instead their intellectual arguments and facts established from experiments have concluded that we need to abandon the notion of an objective reality. Einsteinian realism or the commonsense view of the world is simply unattainable.

As Bohr says "There is essentially the question of an influence on the very conditions that define the possible types of prediction regarding the future behaviour of the system". According to Bohr the polarisation of a photon is an idealistic concept extrapolated from the results of our observations and no greater reality should be attributed to it. There is no element of physical reality corresponding to a physical quantity and Einsteinian objective world or his mathematical realism is just isn't out there. What ever is out there science cannot know what it is.

From Bernard d'Espagnat's paper Quantum theory and Reality.

Bernard d'Espagnat nicely puts it this way that "what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind".

 

[Storm]

You really need to learn to tell the difference between experimental results and philosophical musings which happen to come from scientists.

 

[PolyHedral]

Now you replace those Red and Blue color properties with the property of an object called the spin, say spin up and spin down and those A, B and C with the X, Y, Z spin components of an object then as Mermin shows these properties cannot exist in prior to the measurements and the observed correlations are infact instantaneous. Its not that one physicist was right or the other one was wrong but instead their intellectual arguments and facts established from experiments have concluded that we need to abandon the notion of an objective reality.

Except if you use a multiverse interpretation to say that you're picking from possible universes. Once you do that, your results come out fine.

 

[otokage007]

Pleroma.

I'm willing to accept, for the sake of argument, that objective reality doesn't exist. Could you explain me a little more how this idea (or even fact if you want), leads us to believe in God? I still fail to understand it.

 

[Pleroma]

Pleroma.

I'm willing to accept, for the sake of argument, that objective reality doesn't exist. Could you explain me a little more how this idea (or even fact if you want), leads us to believe in God? I still fail to understand it.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7047/full/436029a.html

"The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things."

- Richard Conn Henry1. Richard Conn Henry is a Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics

Once you realize the fact that only mind exists out there in the external physical world then this Mind is surely something different than the brain and there is much scholarly evidence to suggest that our ancients knew that Mind is something separate and different than the brain, they also knew that the Intellect exists in platonic realms and the ones who stimulate our intellect and our thoughts are none other than anthropomorphic Gods and they are psychological beings and they do exist in their own realm and they are far more real than this empirical reality.


"We are spirits controlled by God"

- Elaine Pagels, Pneumatic esoteric Christianity, Valentinian tradition.

Realized Eschatology - Valentinian tradition

"While the metaphors may not be literally true, nonetheless Valentinians insisted that they described something that is very real. They insisted that what the myth described was in fact MORE real than ordinary reality! As it says in the Treatise on Resurrection, "Do not suppose that the resurrection is an illusion. It is not an illusion; rather it is something real. Instead, one ought to maintain that the world is an illusion, rather than resurrection" (Treatise on Resurrection 48: 12-17).

They believed that the experience expressed through the myth was real and that through visionary experiences (gnosis) and ritual one could experience the events it described. Thus the "myth" is not merely a teaching story. It is a metaphorical description of the experience of redemption."

Savithru deva is lord and master of Agnishoma mandala (pleroma of gods) and He is in the macrocosm as well in the microcosm. Human beings who are not aware of this imagine that it is they and their own mind and intellect that get things to be done through their ten sense organs. How can subordinates (the mind, intellect and sense organs) be independent? Imagining that he is independent, the individual attributes his achievement to his own mind and intellect. This amounts to the state of being enamoured and conceit. But those few who are capable of deep reflection realize that there should be one who inspires or activates the mind and intellect further reflection and contemplation leads such individuals to realize that the Inspirer or Activator is Savithrudeva. It is He and He alone who instil power into the intellect. It is the intellect, which is the centre and source of all activity, physical and mental, etc.

-Devudu

Its in the Vedic religion, its in Buddhism and its in Christianity. On the whole both the esoteric religions and science are converging at a common point.